The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1887-10-07
Wine or War.

Mr.. John Bright, in a recent speech OF
| great force, said that Great Britain, during
| the last two hundred years, had not been
engaged in one war that could not have
| been honorably avoided. Close investiga-
ton of the present causes of each conflict
would probably show that the illustrious
Quaker spoke the truth.
On the back OF this the Paris correspon-
dent of the Times wrote to the journal lie
| represents that he would stake his place
worth $780, 900 a year-and reputation on
the fact that the present Gar is a confirm
ed drunkard. He quotes the following
words, uttered in his hearing by a very
eminent Austrian statesman: ''Everything
now depends on the Gar, who drinks, and
who is very near to the delirium trcmens.
AS he may at any moment commit some
act of folly, Austria must make ready for
war;
Bismarck is also known to imbibe freely.
It is asserted that during the delivery of
his recent speech, demanding a large in
crease in the German army, he consumed
nine glasses of brandy and water. From
his youth up Bismarck has been a deep
drinker. He has been known to boast of
drinking a quart of wine without removing
the cup from his lips, and he drinks freely
every day. Such a brain as he inherited
would have been capable Of better thoughts
and wiser sci G mes if, perhaps, it had net
been kept half paralyzed for fifty years by
alcoholic poison.
Bismarck has been called the true sue
cessor of Frederick the Great. No; he is
the successor of Frederick the Greats
father, another historic drinker of quarts
of wine-another instance of the suspend
ed growth of a mind which could have at
tanned to a true intelligence. Frederick
the Great was always a temperate man, and
the follies he committed, which brought
such disaster upon Prussia, were commit
ted when he was very young.
Mr.. Kinglake, the historian of the Cri-
mean War, attributes to wine the invasion
Of the Crimea by the British army. He
asserts, on the authority of eye witnesses
land the statement has never been denied),
that the dispatch which caused Lord Rag
Ian to invade the Crimea was read over and
disposed of by the British Cabinet when
the members were in a drunken sleep after
dinner. These are his words: Before
the reading Of the paper had long contin-
ued, all the members of the Cabinet, ex-
cept a small minority, were overcome with
sleep. For a moment the noise of a tumb-
ling chair disturbed the repose Of the gov
eminent, but presently the Duke of New
castle resumed the reading Of his drafts,
and then again the fatal sleep descended
upon the eyelids of the ministers"
The historian relates that later in
the evening the Duke of Newcastle
made another attempt to get ministers to
listen to his dispatch, but again drowsi-
ness prevented. Not a letter OF the draft
was altered. 1t was afterwards ascertain
ed that it was the uncompromising phrases
Of the dispatch which caused Lord Raglan
to believe that the cabinet meant him to
invade the Crimea, which was, for every
reason of war and policy, a bad movement.
Mr.. Kinglake, in speaking Of this hideous
crime, involving the loss Of 700, 900 lives,
and money enough to have made them all
happy and contented citizens. calls the wine
which they had been drinking at dinner "a
narcotic substance" which had brought
upon the brains of the government an ire
sistible torpor.
When We consider that the most impor-